Recent social trends have led to an increase in injury and death from gunshot, to the point where, in some locales, the death rate from gunshot now exceeds that from automobile accidents. Persons exposed to risk from gunshot seek to protect themselves from such risk through a variety of methodologies. Many persons in high risk occupations such as law enforcement, security guards, bank tellers, couriers and the like seek to provide themselves with protection from gunshot by armed counterattack, or by using body armor or "bullet-proof" vests.
Armed counterattack to provide personal protection is not a satisfactory defense for several reasons. First, in order to be effective, self-defense using a firearm must be preemptive. This is seldom feasible. Secondly, guns in the hands of persons imperfectly prepared to use them are often the weapons used to victimize such persons. Finally, a person who fires a weapon in a populated area must do so with the knowledge that this can lead to unacceptable consequences to innocent bystanders.
The advantages of armor and other personal protective devices over counterattack are many and compelling. Effective use of personal armor does not require killing or maiming anyone, especially those persons who are not clearly threatening. Armor and other disabling devices can also can make the option of refraining from preemptive use of firearms a more viable tactic: if you can survive being fired upon, you can wait to be fired on before firing your own weapon. Non-lethal disabling methods, such as flash and incapacitating spray can be used more readily and more responsibly than firearms can, since the defensive user does not have to weigh the possibility of killing or maiming innocents. These non-lethal methods also present the psychological advantage of protecting the user while avoiding killing someone in self-defense. Armor and other protective devices pose little danger to the user's surroundings and bystanders. The materials which form modern armors are well consolidated, are typically unaffected by solvents, and pose no environmental hazard.
Body armor is, however, not a complete solution to the risk of gunshot in that it leaves one of the most vulnerable parts of the body, i.e. the head, exposed. What is needed therefore, to improve a user's survivability, is a rapidly deployable shielding device to temporarily cover those portions of the body, like the head, which are not covered by body armor. A solution applied by several workers to this problem rests in the fact that many persons, for instance police officers, often carry or have about them clipboards or similar devices. Such a clipboard, when composed of a suitably projectile-resistant material, can provide a rapidly deployable shield for the head or other unarmored portions of the body. Efforts by others have yielded several versions of an "armored clipboard" to provide the previously discussed shielding device.
The previous attempts by others to utilize a clipboard or other small, commonly available article as a shielding device all exhibit shortcomings. The most common problem which prior art attempts fail to address is that an assailant's first bullet may be deflected or stopped by the device, but the bullet will probably knock the device from the user's hand or move it sufficiently aside that a quickly fired second shot may leave the user unprotected in the head area. Given that almost all firearms in current production are capable of fairly rapid fire, this is a serious limitation of the prior art.
A second shortcoming of many ballistic clipboards is that they are prone to losing much of their resistance to penetration over time. U.S. Pat. No. 3,848,547 to Schafer discloses one such invention. The clipboard, as taught by Schafer, is typically formed of a polycarbonate material conforming to ASTM D-6300 standards. A shortcoming of polycarbonates is that within a fairly short span of time, up to 50% of their ballistic resistance may be lost or degraded due to internal changes in the material itself. This degradation in ballistic performance is often exacerbated with exposure to ultraviolet radiation or to a wide range of solvents.
Modern material science has produced several materials which are very effective at stopping bullets and other ballistic objects. Some are used in the previously discussed bullet-proof vests, and for other military applications. Many of these new armor materials serve to break up a projectile and catch its fragments, thereby preventing injury to the user. One example of these high strength armors is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,859,399.
Another advance in armor technology is the development of reactive armors. A reactive armor is one which performs some act or undergoes some change in response to a threat. U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,152 describes a typical reactive armor. Most reactive armors combine an advanced armor system with an explosive element which is fired in response to a projectile striking or approaching the surface of the armor. The outward blast of the explosive element of the reactive armor tends to blunt the intensity of the projectile's velocity, rendering it less capable of penetrating an armor sub-layer, or of deflecting the projectile so that it strikes the armor substrate at an oblique angle, again reducing the projectile's armor-piercing capacities. Other reactive armors are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,901,622 and 5,070,764.
Explosive reactive armors are generally not well suited for use in personal armor devices. While effective in some military applications, for instance mounted on the glacis of a tank, the potential for unwanted detonation while being carried by an individual makes them less than optimal for personal use. Having an explosive component, explosive reactive armors also introduce an unwanted element of lethality into a personal protective device. A reactive element, however, which would serve to incapacitate an assailant, if coupled with a modern armor material, would provide a significant advantage over the prior art. Specifically, such a device would provide both the required protection against the assailant's first shot and preclude or degrade his ability to deliver an accurate second shot.
In order to stop a bullet, many modern technical armor materials perform two functions. The first is to break the bullet into small fragments in order to reduce its penetrating ability. To break up a bullet requires a material that is at least as hard as the bullet itself. To this end many armors include materials like hardened steel, titanium alloys or ceramics as the first surface the bullet impacts. During the process of bullet breakup a significant portion of the fragments broken up by the hard material continues to move in substantially the same direction as the bullet's original trajectory. If any of these fragments succeed in piercing the hardened material, it is imperative that they be contained before they traverse completely through the armor and render injury to the person the armor is supposed to protect. The second function therefore of the armor is to catch these fragments before they fully penetrate that armor. To this end, many armors also include materials which serve to contain the projectile fragments. In engineering terms, a material chosen for this purpose should have a large strain before failure. Such materials include, but are not limited to: metals; various resins, which may in turn be reinforced by any of several polymers; such as Kevlar.TM., manufactured by Dupont and SpectraShield.TM., manufactured by Allied Signal Corp.; or Kevlar.TM. and SpectraShield.TM. bullet-resistant fabrics without being resin bonded. High strength glass fibers may also serve the previously discussed fiber-reinforcing function.
Many armor materials, when struck with a ballistic projectile, tend to dissipate much of the projectile's kinetic energy by ablating small fragments and particles from the body of the armor itself. At the same time that many of the projectile fragments continue substantially on their original trajectory, another portion of the bullet fragments, as well as a portion of the ablated armor fragments, are reflected back by the hardened component of the armor in a direction substantially opposite to the bullet's original trajectory. This shower of "splashback" fragments can be enhanced by confining the hard material in such a way that fragments ablated from the surface of the armor have no other path of travel other than substantially opposite to the bullet's original trajectory. Ablation, as used in this invention, is defined in the following paragraph. The action of these fragments serves to further erode the bullet into small fragments. Many of these splashback particles and fragments have a velocity component as high as one half of the projectile's velocity at impact. The splashback comprising bullet fragments and ablated armor fragments forms a relatively high-velocity spray of material which serves as one reactive method for incapacitating an assailant.
Ablation, as used herein, describes the complex erosive process, which is not necessarily or predominately a thermal process, that occurs when a high velocity projectile impacts an armor system. Ablation involves the fragmentation of at least a portion of the armor, and may refer to the fragmentation of the projectile as well. The energy the projectile expends in ablating the armor diffuses the projectile's directed energy, thus reducing or eliminating the projectile's ability to fully penetrate the armor.
Several other incapacitating methods or agents are currently available for use in rendering an assailant temporarily incapable of further hostile acts. Examples of such incapacitating agents include, but are not limited to: chemical agents such as: tear gas, Mace.TM., and pepper spray; electronic shock apparatus; and flash apparatus. The present invention specifically contemplates the incorporation of the such agents and methods to provide additional reactive incapacitation methodologies.
While the reactive ballistic protection device described above is exemplified as an armored clipboard, the principles of the present invention may, with equal facility and utility, be implemented in a variety of articles and devices. These devices include, but are not limited to: attache cases or other hand luggage; umbrellas; skateboards; partitions; and furniture panels. Several of these devices will be subsequently described herein.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,153,927; 4,919,037, and 4,442,780 detail the work of others to provide a ballistic protection device incorporated within a clipboard. U.S. Pat. No. 3,762,345 details the efforts of one worker to provide ballistic protection by an armored attache case. None of the cited references teach or disclose an effective method for eliminating or reducing the effectiveness of an assailant's second shot.
An apparatus which combines the ballistic resistance of modern armor technology with the reactive incapacitating feature will not only serve to protect the user from an assailant's first bullet, but will also, at least temporarily, disable such an assailant and prevent his making a potentially more lethal second shot.